Quality Control
Department of Business and Computing Studies
I spent a lot of my time to carefully plan my department, Department of Business and Computing Studies. I carried with me a pack of about eight Gantt charts, each of which documented a course, student group or another part of my work area. I knew what would happen when, where and with whom every hour of every week. I agreed with my teachers to give them a minimum three months notice if I had to change their disciplines. By the end of a semester, I had already planned the next, down to the smallest detail. Yes, I am a pedant, but I found that by scheduling an avoiding crises, and no classroom sharing conflicts, no teachers, who knew when an exam was scheduled, not students who did not know what their schedule was. Everything ticked along like a Swiss clock. It also meant that I could leave most of my department that runs on autopilot with occasional interventions, allowed me to get on with other issues.
This is very similar to the way in Quality Control first used by the Japanese, Kaizen. Kaizen not leave quality to the end of a process, at which time it was too expensive and too difficult to correct mistakes. They took a quality approach at each minute step in a process. Which brings me to today’s dilemma.